


Playing The Sims Is Always Better

by astralpenguin



Series: 3am [5]
Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Yagami Light, Bisexual L, Casual Displays of Affection, Demiromantic Yagami Light, Established Relationship, Fluff, Greyromantic Yagami Light, Holding Hands, Humor, Implied/Referenced Character Death, L is happy for once in his life, Late Night Conversations, M/M, References to the Sims, Yotsuba Arc, the rest of the taskforce is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23774203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralpenguin/pseuds/astralpenguin
Summary: “What are you even doing? Why is there music? Did you lose your headphones?”L tapped the side of his laptop screen. “I am waiting for the Sims to load.”(can be read as a standalone)
Relationships: L/Yagami Light
Series: 3am [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640104
Comments: 32
Kudos: 310





	Playing The Sims Is Always Better

**Author's Note:**

> i don't name it in the fic itself but it's very obvious that the specific version of the sims that they're playing is the sims 3. which had not been released, let alone completed, during the yotsuba arc of either the manga or the anime. it's anachronistic as fuck but also consider: i wanted to assign the taskforce sims3 traits, and this is my fic so i can do what i want :D
> 
> if you're reading this without reading the rest of the series first then all you need to know is that light doesn't remember being kira but he and L have established that he _was_ kira

Light woke up.

Unlike how it usually was when he found himself awake at stupid o’clock in the morning, him waking up wasn’t his own doing.

He’d been woken up by music.

Granted, the music had been turned down to a low volume, in what was likely an attempt to  _ not _ disturb him. But the attempt had failed. He’d been disturbed. The music had pierced through Light’s brain and dragged him into the waking world.

There was nothing else for it. He opened his eyes.

Squinting against the light coming from L’s computer screen, Light looked up at him and said, “Why are you like this?”

“Oh,” said L, glancing over at Light. “Sorry.”

Light shook his head. “No you’re not,” he said.

“I am.”

“What are you even doing? Why is there music? Did you lose your headphones?”

L tapped the side of his laptop screen. “I am waiting for the Sims to load.”

Light blinked.

He pushed himself upright so he was sitting up and rubbed his eyes.

He blinked again.

Yep.

L had only answered one of Light’s questions, but he’d answered it honestly.

His laptop screen was showing the main loading screen for the Sims.

The progress bar appeared to be frozen at a third of the way full. The cursor was still moving, it was still doing the loading circle thing, so Light could tell that the screen wasn’t frozen entirely.

The game was just taking a really long time to load.

“Why are you loading up the Sims?” asked Light.

“Because,” said L, a small smile appearing on his face, “I want to play it.”

“But  _ why?” _

L shrugged. “I haven’t touched the game in a while,” he said. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve played the game since just before the Kira investigation began. I’ve been wanting to play again for a while now.”

“And you decided that the best time to do it was in the middle of the night?”

“I can’t exactly play it during the day.”

L had a point with that one. If the lead detective decided to take a break from his detective work to play the Sims, of all things, then the rest of the taskforce would not be pleased.

And that was putting it mildly.

Light sighed.

“I left my headphones downstairs, so I didn’t have the option of using them,” said L. “I’m sorry that I didn’t mute my computer. The game is generally more fun when you’re able to hear the music and sound effects, and I thought that I had turned the volume down low enough that I wouldn’t disturb you. If you like, I can mute it now and you can go back to sleep.”

Light shook his head. “No point,” he said. “I’m too awake. By the time I get back to sleep it’ll be time for us to get up again.”

“I’ll be more mindful in future.”

“Please.”

They said nothing for a couple of minutes, silently watching the progress bar creep up. When it was just over halfway full, Light spoke again.

“Why is this taking so long? I know this game is infamous for its long loading times, but this is getting ridiculous.”

“I have every available expansion pack, a lot of mods, and a lot of custom content installed,” said L. “They make the game more interesting, but they also slow it down considerably. I consider it to be worth the trade.”

“I don’t know if I’d be patient enough for that.”

“That’s fair,” said L. “A lot of the time I’m not patient enough either. However, right now I am.”

The progress bar jumped to three quarters of the way full.

“What the-” started Light.

L smiled. “The progress bar is unreliable,” he said.

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Have you ever played a Sims game before?” asked L.

Light shook his head. “Sayu has,” he said, “but I’ve never played it myself. I never really had the time. I was always busy studying.”

“I think you’d like it,” said L. “It can be quite relaxing, and is often amusing.”

“And it gives you the ability to play God, control your sims’ every action, and kill them in a variety of creative ways?”

L laughed. “I was deliberately not bringing that part up.”

Light sighed with a smile and put an arm around L’s waist, carefully maneuvering the chain so that it didn’t get in the way. “Sure,” he said.

“Although now that you’ve brought it up yourself, intentionally killing sims can feel therapeutic, and I genuinely recommend it.”

Light frowned. “How so?”

“Say there’s someone that you dislike,” he said. “The reason doesn’t matter. They could be rude, or they could be an idiot, or you could just not like their face. Regardless of that, you might still be stuck with having to interact with that person, and having to attempt to tolerate them. In those situations, I’ve found that recreating them in the Sims and then killing them off can be very helpful.”

Light hummed in thought. “That does sound like it could be helpful, I guess,” he said. “I can definitely think of a couple of people I knew in high school who pissed me off enough that I’d consider doing it. But since when have  _ you  _ ever had to play nice when you didn’t like someone? What’s the point of being the reclusive and eccentric genius if not to avoid those kinds of people?”

“I’ve still had to talk to people over the course of my cases,” said L. “But you’re right, my contact with these sorts of people is limited. I’ve only ever actually used the game in that way once.”

“Oh?” Light leant his head on L’s shoulder. “Tell me about it?”

“Well,” said L. “It was very simple. It happened when I was a teenager. I built a maze that spanned the whole lot. The only furniture that I put down was a fridge in the very centre of the maze. I then put the free will of the sim of the person I was upset with at maximum, placed them at the entrance to the maze, and waited. It took them a while to realise that they needed to eat, and by then-”

Light started to laugh.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Which I think you were well aware of. But thank you for sharing that anecdote of you being utterly heartless.”

“I was being utterly heartless to some pixels that were made specifically for that purpose.”

“Even so,” said Light.

“Yes,” said L. “Ultimate power can go to anyone’s head.”

“Who were you upset at?” asked Light.

L’s expression changed from one of slight amusement to sadness. “Someone I used to know. He’d been unnecessarily cruel to someone else that I used to know. That particular situation resolved itself without my input, so my decision to vent my frustrations through the Sims was a good call on my part.”

“Why do you say that you don’t know either of them anymore?”

L didn’t respond.

Light took his head off of L’s shoulder and turned to face him. “You don’t have to tell me if-”

“It’s fine,” said L. “It’s just inaccurate to say that you know people who aren’t alive.”

“Oh,” said Light. “I’m sorry.”

L shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” Light took L’s hand. “If I heard that any of my old classmates had died, it would freak me out. And if you cared enough about them to go to the effort of creating a simulated torture chamber for one of them, then their deaths probably hit you a lot harder than the deaths of a couple of random aquaintances would.”

L nodded. “They did,” he said. “But I’d rather not talk about them right now.”

“Okay,” said Light. “If you ever do, I’m here.”

L smiled. “Thank you,” he said.

The screen changed to the game’s main menu.

“Thank the Gods,” said L. “I was starting to think that it would never load.”

There was one saved game already on the screen, but L clicked to start a new game before Light could get a good look at it.

“Which town should we use?” asked L.

“We?” asked Light.

“Well,  _ I’m  _ going to be playing this game,” said L. “Your options are to either go back to sleep or watch me play. You’ve already said that you’re unable to go back to sleep, and if you’re going to be watching then you might as well have some input.”

That sounded fair to Light.

“What towns are there and what’s the difference?”

L opened up a drop down list.

“This one is a group of islands that’s supposed to represent a tropical paradise,” he said, highlighting one of the town names. “This one is your generic suburban town. This one is your generic suburban town except everyone has a pet and there’s a horse racing venue. This one is a city. And this one is mostly populated by non-humans, like vampires, werewolves and fairies. I can go on?”

“The city,” said Light.

L selected the city and started a new game.

Another loading screen popped up.

“Really?” said Light.

“You know how people talk about spending entire days doing nothing except playing the Sims?” said L.

“Yeah?”

“These loading times are part of the reason for it. If you wait this long for the game to open, you’re likely to want to spend even longer playing it so that it feels like it was worth it.”

Light looked over at the clock. “We have a couple of hours,” he said.

“Not quite,” said L. “We have a couple of hours until the earliest time that it’s acceptable for us to start our morning. If we don’t go downstairs until everyone else has arrived, then we have plenty of time.”

“Do you think we’ll really be playing for that long?”

L looked over at him. “I have a tendency to lose track of time when I play this game. You may need to drag me from it.”

Light laughed. “That won’t be a problem.”

“I knew I could count on you.”

The game loaded and L clicked on ‘Create-A-Sim’.

“What kind of sims should we make?” asked L.

Light thought about it for a moment. 

“We could make the taskforce?” he said.

L laughed.

“What?” said Light.

“That has the potential to be both disastrous and hilarious. Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

Light grinned. “Well, now I am.”

They made Matsuda first.

When it came to making the sim look physically like Matsuda, Light was impressed at how easy L made it look. Light was sure that if he’d been left alone and instructed to make people in the Sims, they’d all look like the default sims that came preloaded with the game. Or maybe he’d get lucky if he hit the random button enough times that something would look vaguely similar.

But once L finally clicked off the face tab, the sim on the screen really did look like Matsuda.

“That looks really good,” said Light.

L shrugged.

Light gently poked L in the side. “Take the compliment. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”

L smiled. “Thank you,” he said.

“How did you get so good at that?”

“Hours of practise,” he said. He paused, then added, “Also there were never any pictures of me or the people I lived with when I was younger. If I wanted to capture what anyone looked like, I either had to learn how to draw or get good at customisation in this game.”

L didn’t bring up his past very often.

This was the second time he’d done it in one night.

After what had been mentioned the first time - that at least two people that L had known when he was younger were now dead - Light could tell that L didn’t want to have a bigger discussion about the people he used to live with. When he said that they never had any photos taken, it sounded final, like any questions on the topic would be ignored.

Light  _ was  _ curious.

L knew almost everything about him, and yet Light didn’t know nearly as much about L.

But Light also understood that when secrets were all you knew, then breaking the habit was a lot easier said than done. He sometimes got the urge to keep random and unimportant things a secret, something that he assumed were residual feelings from when he was Kira, and he’d only been Kira for less than a year! L had been keeping himself hidden from the world for (presumably) most of his life.

Also, Light was Kira. For all they were going to try and make sure that the first Kira didn’t return, there was a chance that they would fail. If they failed then any knowledge that Light had been given would be in Kira’s hands. It was safer for everyone if L held off on talking in depth about himself and his life until they were sure that the danger had passed.

For now, L was honest about thoughts and feelings for Light, and that was enough.

“That’s a clever workaround,” said Light. He pointed to the screen. “I think Matsuda should wear the green t-shirt for this category.”

L shot Light a grateful smile for changing the subject and clicked the chosen t-shirt.

Once sim!Matsuda had all of his outfits picked out, they moved on to the personality tab.

“How does this bit work?” asked Light.

“We assign up to five personaility traits,” said L, “and a lifetime wish that acts as the goal that the sim will spend their life working towards.”

They didn’t spend too long picking traits for Matsuda, settling on: brave, clumsy, easily impressed, excitable, and friendly. They gave him the lifetime wish of wanting to reach the top of the law enforcement career.

They made Mogi next. He was given the same lifetime wish as Matsuda - they agreed that most of the taskforce were going to be given that same lifetime wish - and the traits: brave, neat, no sense of humour, shy, and cat person. They had no idea whether he liked cats or not, but they didn’t know enough about him to be able to say for sure that he didn’t, and they needed to fill the last trait slot.

The next one they made was Aizawa. He was initially given the traits: brave, charismatic, family oriented, hot-headed, and ambitious. They were just about to move on to the next one when Light suggested that describing Aizawa as ‘ambitious’ didn’t feel right to him. L agreed, and they swapped it out for ‘dog person’.

If they could randomly decide that Mogi liked cats, then they could randomly decide that Aizawa liked dogs. 

Next up was Soichiro. Once again, Light was seriously impressed by how good L was able to make the sims look. The figure on the screen looked eerily like his father. They gave him the traits: brave, family oriented, good, hopeless romantic, and light sleeper. The last two traits were on Light’s insistence.

“Ryuuzaki, trust me on this, you haven’t had to live with this man for eighteen years. I’ve never seen anyone more disgustingly in love with his partner in my life.

“If Sayu or I ever tried to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night when he was home, he  _ always  _ caught us.”

L conceded on both points, and the traits went in.

Watari was given the traits: athletic, eccentric, brave, neat, and proper. Unlike everyone else so far, they didn’t discuss it. L just selected these traits without any input from Light.

“I’ve made Watari in the Sims countless times,” said L, by way of explanation. “These are the traits I always choose for him. They even have his approval.”

L also gave him the lifetime wish of wanting to be rich.

_ “Does  _ he want to be rich?” asked Light.

“He already is,” said L. “But there isn’t anything else here that fits him.”

“Fair enough.” He paused, then said, “Should we do Misa as well?”

“She isn’t strictly a part of the taskforce,” said L. “Are you asking if we should include her as a way of delaying making ourselves?”

“Yes.”

There was no point in pretending otherwise when L had seen through him so easily.

“There’s no harm in making her as well,” said L. “We have the space.”

Deciding on which traits to give Misa was more of a struggle than it had been for everyone else. There were so many options that suited her.

L tried to give her the absent minded trait, but Light refused to let him.

“Just because she’s not as smart as us doesn’t mean she’s an idiot, or any more forgetful than anyone else,” he said. “And if she  _ was _ an idiot then she wouldn’t have been able to build her career up like how she has.  _ And,  _ as far as we know, she definitively tracked down Kira when you and the taskforce couldn’t.”

L sighed. “I suppose you’ve got a point.”

They eventually settled on: excitable, charismatic, natural born performer, social butterfly, and star quality. They gave her the lifetime wish of wanting to be a famous actor.

Misa was done.

Which just left themselves.

“Do me first,” said Light.

L didn’t move his head. He just glanced at Light through the corner of his eye. “Interesting phrasing.”

Light put his head in his hands. “You know exactly what I meant, you fucker.”

“Yes,” said L. He was smiling. “But I couldn’t let that one go.”

“Yes you could,” said Light, sitting back up properly. 

“I suppose I could,” said L. He tapped his thumb against his lower lip. “I just didn’t want to.” He took Light’s hand. “Your reactions to those sorts of jokes are adorable, and I wanted to see it.”

Light’s face burned.

He looked away.

“Just make the damn sim already,” he said.

L laughed softly and did just that.

He did it one handed, though. He didn’t let go of Light.

After a few minutes, he squeezed Light’s hand to get his attention. “Trait adding time,” he said.

Light looked at the screen.

The sim on the screen looked exactly like him.

Light didn’t know why he was surprised anymore - every other sim that L had made had looked exactly like their real life counterpart - but he was still surprised and impressed.

L added four traits. These were: ambitious, charismatic, genius, and unflirty.

“Would you say that these are accurate?” asked L.

Light nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “They’re accurate. There’s one slot left now, right?”

“There is,” said L. “Which trait do you think we should add?”

Light shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m still not that familiar with the options, so even if it’s a sim version of  _ me _ I don’t know if I’m the best person to ask.”

L scrolled down the list. “True,” he said. “I suppose I’ll just pick one.”

He double clicked on an option and it was added to the list.

Light took a deep breath.

“Ryuuzaki,” he said.

“Yes?” said L, a note of false innocence in his voice.

The fact that the false innocence was there told Light that L knew exactly what Light was going to say. That L was expressing that he knew what was coming by purposefully being bad at pretending not to know meant that he’d intended it to be a joke. Light actually didn’t have a problem with that. If he’d added the trait out of a serious belief that it was true, then that would’ve been an issue. But he’d been making a joke. Light could take a joke.

And the joke wouldn’t be complete if Light didn’t finish calling him out on it.

“Did you just give my sim the evil trait?”

L removed the evil trait from the list of sim!Light’s traits.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t do that.”

He double clicked on another trait, adding it to sim!Light’s list.

Light could hear the laughter in his own voice when he said, “Did you just replace it with the no sense of humour trait?”

L removed that one too.

“I don’t know what you could possibly mean.”

Light gave up on trying not to laugh. “Give it here,” he said, pulling the laptop over to him. “I’ll pick the last one myself.”

L pouted, but didn’t resist.

It didn’t take Light long to pick a suitable trait.

“Perfectionist,” he said as he handed L back his computer.

“Huh,” said L. “Light is being more honest about himself than I expected him to be.”

“You say that like it’s some huge character flaw, but that’s not true,” said Light. “I want to be perfect all the time. I know it’s not always a great mindset, but it’s the mindset I have. But because I actively strive for that level of perfection, I perform better and often achieve it. The trait’s description said that the things that sims with that trait create are of a higher quality. There wasn’t any reason  _ not  _ to be honest about it.”

“Fair enough,” said L.

“And it’s a lot more accurate than evil.”

“Yes,” agreed L. “Light, as he is now, is not evil.”

“Glad we got that settled,” said Light, nodding decisively.

L clicked to add a new sim to the household.

He created a sim version of himself with practised ease. Although L had made making every sim look easy, Light could tell that L had made himself many times before. He knew exactly at what point each slider needed to be placed at, and he finished creating his simself’s face in half the time that it had taken for him to create anyone else’s.

He gave himself the traits: genius, light sleeper, loner, perceptive, and socially awkward, and the lifetime wish about reaching the top of the private detective career.

The only thing left for them to do before they could start playing the game for real was assign the sims’ relationships.

Soichiro was designated as Light’s father.

L opened up the panel for designating Watari’s relationship to L, but he closed it without doing anything. Light had a feeling that L had been about to put Watari as his father, but had thought better of it at the last minute.

“You were going to put him as your father?” asked Light.

“It was a misclick,” said L.

“More like mis-click-and-drag, which is a lot harder to do with that level of precision,” said Light. “Look, I completely understand wanting to keep some things quiet in case Kira does end up coming back, but I already saw what you were doing there. If you want sim Watari to be sim Ryuuzaki’s father, then at this point you might as well do it.”

L set sim!Watari as sim!L’s father.

“Force of habit,” he said. “I should’ve known better.”

“Yeah,” said Light. “But it happens to everyone. One time, Sayu wasn’t paying enough attention to what she was doing, and she wrote on one of those new interactive whiteboard things in school with a normal whiteboard pen. It was just muscle memory and what she was used to, but it ended up costing the school a lot of money to fix.”

L blinked.

“My point is that you’re human, and at least you didn’t break anything.”

“How old was your sister when this happened?”

Light smiled. “This happened a year and a half ago, so she was nearly thirteen”

“Oh dear,”

“Yeah,” said Light, “I know. but things like that happen. And she’s a lot more careful now.”

L smiled. “I’m sure she is.”

He looked back at the screen.

“It’s not possible to place a single sim in more than one romantic relationship at the character creation stage,” said L. “Which relationship would you like to be in in the game?”

Light didn’t need to think about it.

“You and me,” he said. “Why is that even a question?”

“It’s always better to ask and be sure,” said L.

He set sim!L and sim!Light as being boyfriends.

“Okay,” said Light. “I get that. But there was no chance that I was going to say that I wanted my sim to be dating Misa’s sim. I may not yet be able to escape, but there’s no reason that I should make him suffer too.”

“And you’d rather your sim be in a relationship with me?”

Light gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes.

_ “Yes,”  _ he said. “Of course. The tier list goes: in a relationship with you, in relationship with no one at all, in a relationship with anyone else, and  _ then  _ in a relationship with her.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who you’d want to be in a relationship with less than Misa Amane. She is rather beautiful.”

Light slid so that he was lying back down in the bed. “Yes,” he said. “She’s objectively very pretty. She’s anyone who’s attracted to women’s dream girlfriend. I respect those people, but I am not one of them.”

L leaned over and kissed Light on the forehead.

“Perhaps,” he said, “we should swap out one of your sim’s traits for ‘dramatic’? It’s not too late for edits to be made.”

“Oh please,” said Light. “I haven’t even made a huge show of rolling out of bed yet.”

“The key word being  _ ‘yet’.” _

Light sat back up. “You have no faith in me.”

“I have plenty of faith in you,” said L.

“Sure you do.”

“I do!”

Light laughed. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s start actually playing the game.”

  
  


(Light predicted that the first fire would be started by Misa.

L predicted that the first fire would be started by Matsuda.

They were both wrong.

As the house burned down around Soichiro Yagami, on just the second in-game day, all that Light and L could do was watch in a mixture of horror and amusement as every single one of the sims ran into the flames and died.

“It’s a good thing we saved when we started,” said L.

“Does this happen a lot?” asked Light.

“Do the sims often fling themselves into dangerous yet easily avoidable situations, only for it to cause their deaths? Yes,” said L. “Yes they do.”

“Wow,” said Light. “Even the genius sims are dumb as hell.”

“They are,” said L, somewhat absently. “They really are.”)

**Author's Note:**

> comments mean everything to me !!!
> 
> i hope everyone's staying safe and healthy <3
> 
> come say [hi!!](https://astralpenguin.tumblr.com/)


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